U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said Friday he was moving to file a bipartisan bill to repeal Section 230 of America's Communications Decency Act.

"The law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others say," explains an EFF blog post.

"Experts argue that a repeal of Section 230 could kill free speech on the internet," writes LiveMint — though America's last two presidents both supported a reapl:

During his first presidency, US President Donald Trump called to repeal the law and signed an executive order attempting to curb some of its protections, though it was challenged in court.
Subsequently, former President Joe Biden also voiced his opinion against the law.

An EFF blog post explains the case for Section 230:

Congress passed this bipartisan legislation because it recognized that promoting more user speech online outweighed potential harms. When harmful speech takes place, it's the speaker that should be held responsible, not the service that hosts the speech... Without Section 230, the Internet is different. In Canada and Australia, courts have allowed operators of online discussion groups to be punished for things their users have said. That has reduced the amount of user speech online, particularly on controversial subjects. In non-democratic countries, governments can directly censor the internet, controlling the speech of platforms and users. If the law makes us liable for the speech of others, the biggest platforms would likely become locked-down and heavily censored. The next great websites and apps won't even get started, because they'll face overwhelming legal risk to host users' speech.

But "I strongly believe that Section 230 has long outlived its use," Senator Whitehouse said this week, saying Section 230 "a real vessel for evil that needs to come to an end."

"The laws that Section 230 protect these big platforms from are very often laws that go back to the common law of England, that we inherited when this country was initially founded. I mean, these are long-lasting, well-tested, important legal constraints that have — they've met the test of time, not by the year or by the decade, but by the century.

"And yet because of this crazy Section 230, these ancient and highly respected doctrines just don't reach these people. And it really makes no sense, that if you're an internet platform you get treated one way; you do the exact same thing and you're a publisher, you get treated a completely different way.

"And so I think that the time has come.... It really makes no sense... [Testimony before the committee] shows how alone and stranded people are when they don't have the chance to even get justice. It's bad enough to have to live through the tragedy... But to be told by a law of Congress, you can't get justice because of the platform — not because the law is wrong, not because the rule is wrong, not because this is anything new — simply because the wrong type of entity created this harm."

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Nonprofit Code.org released its 2025 State of AI & Computer Science Education report this week with a state-by-state analysis of school policies complaining that "0 out of 50 states require AI+CS for graduation."

But meanwhile, at the college level, "Purdue University will begin requiring that all of its undergraduate students demonstrate basic competency in AI," writes former college president Michael Nietzel, "starting with freshmen who enter the university in 2026."

The new "AI working competency" graduation requirement was approved by the university's Board of Trustees at its meeting on December 12... The requirement will be embedded into every undergraduate program at Purdue, but it won't be done in a "one-size-fits-all" manner. Instead, the Board is delegating authority to the provost, who will work with the deans of all the academic colleges to develop discipline-specific criteria and proficiency standards for the new campus-wide requirement. [Purdue president] Chiang said students will have to demonstrate a working competence through projects that are tailored to the goals of individual programs. The intent is to not require students to take more credit hours, but to integrate the new AI expectation into existing academic requirements...

While the news release claimed that Purdue may be the first school to establish such a requirement, at least one other university has introduced its own institution-wide expectation that all its graduates acquire basic AI skills. Earlier this year, The Ohio State University launched an AI Fluency initiative, infusing basic AI education into core undergraduate requirements and majors, with the goal of helping students understand and use AI tools — no matter their major.

Purdue wants its new initiative to help graduates:
— Understand and use the latest AI tools effectively in their chosen fields, including being able to identify the key strengths and limits of AI technologies;
— Recognize and communicate clearly about AI, including developing and defending decisions informed by AI, as well as recognizing the influence and consequences of AI in decision-making;
— Adapt to and work with future AI developments effectively.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/14/0557226/purdue-university-approves-new-ai-requirement-for-all-undergrads?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

America's solar industry "just delivered another huge quarter," reports Electrek, "installing 11.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in Q3 2025. That makes it the third-largest quarter on record and pushes total solar additions this year past 30 GW..."

According to the new "US Solar Market Insight Q4 2025" report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, 85% of all new power added to the grid during the first nine months of the Trump administration came from solar and storage. And here's the twist: Most of that growth — 73% — happened in red [Republican-leaning] states. Eight of the top 10 states for new installations fall into that category, including Texas, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Kentucky, and Arkansas...

Two new solar module factories opened this year in Louisiana and South Carolina, adding a combined 4.7 GW of capacity. That brings the total new U.S. module manufacturing capacity added in 2025 to 17.7 GW. With a new wafer facility coming online in Michigan in Q3, the U.S. can now produce every major component of the solar module supply chain...

SEIA also noted that, following an analysis of EIA data, it found that more than 73 GW of solar projects across the U.S. are stuck in permitting limbo and at risk of politically motivated delays or cancellations.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/13/0110246/america-adds-117-gw-of-new-solar-capacity-in-q3---third-largest-quarter-on-record?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Polar bears are still sadly expected to go extinct this century," with two-thirds of the population gone by 2050," says the lead researcher on a new study from the University of East Anglia in Britain.

But their research also suggests polar bears "are rapidly rewiring their own genetics in a bid to survive," reports NBC News, in "the first documented case of rising temperatures driving genetic change in a mammal."

"I believe our work really does offer a glimmer of hope — a window of opportunity for us to reduce our carbon emissions to slow down the rate of climate change and to give these bears more time to adapt to these stark changes in their habitats," [the lead author of the study told NBC News].

Building on earlier University of Washington research, [lead researcher] Godden's team analyzed blood samples from polar bears in northeastern and southeastern Greenland. In the slightly warmer south, they found that genes linked to heat stress, aging and metabolism behaved differently from those in northern bears. "Essentially this means that different groups of bears are having different sections of their DNA changed at different rates, and this activity seems linked to their specific environment and climate," Godden said in a university press release. She said this shows, for the first time, that a unique group of one species has been forced to "rewrite their own DNA," adding that this process can be considered "a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice...."

Researchers say warming ocean temperatures have reduced vital sea ice platforms that the bears use to hunt seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. This led to genetic changes as the animals' digestive system adapts to a diet of plants and low fats in the absence of prey, Godden told NBC News.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/14/199215/polar-bears-are-rewiring-their-own-genetics-to-survive-a-warming-climate?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

AI "has gutted entry-level roles in the tech industry," reports Rest of World.

One student at a high-ranking engineering college in India tells them that among his 400 classmates, "fewer than 25% have secured job offers... there's a sense of panic on the campus."

Students at engineering colleges in India, China, Dubai, and Kenya are facing a "jobpocalypse" as artificial intelligence replaces humans in entry-level roles. Tasks once assigned to fresh graduates, such as debugging, testing, and routine software maintenance, are now increasingly automated. Over the last three years, the number of fresh graduates hired by big tech companies globally has declined by more than 50%, according to a report published by SignalFire, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Even though hiring rebounded slightly in 2024, only 7% of new hires were recent graduates. As many as 37% of managers said they'd rather use AI than hire a Gen Z employee...

Indian IT services companies have reduced entry-level roles by 20%-25% thanks to automation and AI, consulting firm EY said in a report last month. Job platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Eures noted a 35% decline in junior tech positions across major EU countries during 2024...

"Five years ago, there was a real war for [coders and developers]. There was bidding to hire," and 90% of the hires were for off-the-shelf technical roles, or positions that utilize ready-made technology products rather than requiring in-house development, said Vahid Haghzare, director at IT hiring firm Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment in Dubai. Since the rise of AI, "it has dropped dramatically," he said. "I don't even think it's touching 5%. It's almost completely vanished." The company headhunts workers from multiple countries including China, Singapore, and the U.K... The current system, where a student commits three to five years to learn computer science and then looks for a job, is "not sustainable," Haghzare said. Students are "falling down a hole, and they don't know how to get out of it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/12/14/2030215/entry-level-tech-workers-confront-an-ai-fueled-jobpocalypse?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.